The University of Vienna was founded by Duke Rudolph IV of Austria in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. As at other European universities, the primary language of scholarship was Latin. This proclamation in Latin is by Petrus Muchitsch, a classical philologist and theologian who twice served as rector of the university, in 1577–78 and again in 1578. In this greeting, Petrus invites the students of the university to resume their studies following the end of the 1578 epidemic of plague in Vienna. Printed in ...